DEVELOP AWARDS: David Perry, Development Legend retrospective

Visionary developer David Perry was honoured with the highest accolade at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards on Wednesday night.

The man who recently sold his cloud gaming business to Sony was handed the Development Legend Award, a prize only a handful of developers can claim ownership of.

Perry, who started out in the games industry sending game code to magazines to be printed for others to copy into early computers, received his first royalty cheque when he was so young he didn’t have a bank account.

Perry went on found Earthworm Jim studio Shiny Entertainment, which he sold to Atari for $47 million, and establish consulting and early crowdfunding outfits, before serving as a cloud gaming pioneer by pushing Gaikai to the forefront of the gaming public’s – and Sony’s – conscience.

He has worked with the Hollywood icons the Wachowski brothers and Keanu Reeves on the Matrix game, and can be seen in the video below with the likes of Shigero Miyamoto, Peter Molynuex, Hideo Kojima, Cliff Bleszinski, Will Wright, Warren Spector, Tim Schafer, Brenda Garno and a wealth of others.

At the Develop Industry Excellence Awards 2012 ceremony he received a standing ovation as he took to the stage, delivering an emotional and often very funny speech. His proud mother (pictured above with David after the ceremony) sat in the audience, a first for any of our winners.

Below is the video montage celebrating his career.